All About Android 101: Spy Flowers

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Andy Rubin is stepping down as head of Android. Google's Larry Page announced the big news stating Andy had decided to move onto other projects within the company, and Andy Rubin wrote an email to Android partners where he said…

"I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google. I am amazed by what we have accomplished from those early days (not so long ago!), and remain passionate about the power of a simple idea and a shared goal — an open source platform freely available to everyone — to transform computing for people everywhere."

There has been speculation over whether Android is called "Android" because it sounds like "Andy." Actually, Android is Andy Rubin - coworkers at Apple gave him the nickname back in 1989 because of his love for robots. Android.com was Rubin’s personal website until 2008.

Now, replacing Andy at the helm of Android is Sundar Pichai who has thusfar acted as VP of Chrome… But he's merely ADDING Android to his current duties, not replacing it. Which leads to some interesting speculation… But first, let's just get this out of the way. Our new segment. We thought long and hard for a name for the segment, and came up with:

Popular app AdAway was among those removed, and received notice that its app was in violation of section 4.4 of the Play Store Developer Distribution Agreement. Here is the cited section: 4.4 Prohibited Actions. You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Market, including the development or distribution of Products, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator. You may not use customer information obtained from the Market to sell or distribute Products outside of the Market. There really isn't much wiggle room on interpretation here - ad blockers clearly do interfere with the properties and services of third parties (including Google, which is probably a big one not to interfere with).

Geek.com says that Google's going to combine its chat services under the name ""Google Babble"" - Services: Google Talk, Hangout, Voice, Messenger, Chat for Drive collaboration, and Google Talk for G+ - They all function just a little differently from one another and they don't talk to each other - How the new service would work: One chat window across all of Google's products. The same features would be available everywhere - Examples: share photos in chat windows like you would in G+ Messenger. Start a hangout from your contact list - Conversations would be threaded across all services - No official timeframe for the release of this rebranding has been made clear, but Geek.com was told to expect a presentation on the unification of these products during Google IO this year.

Drew Blackard, director of product planning for Samsung's mobile business in the U.S., told CNET that many software features will make their way to other Samsung devices such as the Galaxy S3 and Note 2. "Our hope is to bring anything that's not dependent on hardware to other devices,"

The Galaxy S4, will hit six U.S. cellular networks beginning in April 2013. Indeed, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cricket, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon plan to sell Samsung's latest creation starting next month.